I hope this helps. I am open to any other ideas, so any hunches you might have...

[edit] ...and I do know where the control panel is, there is just a lot of junk on it and I had to search a little. I am fairly new to XP, since I just got it this december, however 98 works on a similar basis and I had explored it thorougly. [/edit]

[edit](again) hey, just a stray thought, but mabe I need to download a patch. I did download the game recently, a few weeks ago, but do I still need to patch it? [/edit]

Looking at the screenshots, you have the latest version which is 1.5c.

I have to admit, we're stumped - this is the worst kind of bug, since other people are reporting it works fine with the same hardware, and we are using exactly the same driver with no problems.

From the screenshots, it looks like the font and the animations are broken somehow. If that works on other hardware, I can't think of any sensible reason why it wouldn't work on a 5200 - it works on my GeForce3 and much older hardware. the only thing I can think that remains is some issue/conflict with your machine. You said you run other games with no problems - just to make sure: hardware accelerated games? Some casual games run in software mode, and so might not show issues with hardware acceleration. I'm sure you've probably got some modern games what with having a 5200, but I thought I'd check.

Is there any difference between 800X600 mode and 640X480 mode?

Failing that, do you have any software that runs in the background? Perhaps there's a conflict with some other app we are unaware of.

both my brothers pcs are running 5200s (although with intel processors), i haven't tried running starscape since i upgraded to my 6600GT (with AMD), maybe I should try to sneak it on to one of their computers or at least run it on mine

well, I'm miffed. With the mention of Descent, I remembered my Descent: Freespace disk and decided to install it. movie sequences and menus were totally glitched out. I guess I had to look harder. Does this change anything?

here is a list of processes from my task manager. I doubt that any of them are warez but if you're up to searching, be my guest.

none of them appear to be warez but i can tell you have a brother printer although i don't know too much about the way starscape works i don't see anything there that would interfere with it. if you want to make sure, close everything thats not completely nessecary (or reboot in safe mode) and see if you still get the problem.
Note: not to be taken for actual computer advice, or internally.

Since they are cheap, I just replaced my trusty old GeForce3, with an xfx GeForceFX5200.

No problems at all, I tried running the game in GL and D3D modes, and also in every combination with 16bit textures/screen. All worked perfectly. I'm using the latest driver available from nVidia's site on winXP Service Pack 2.

Bad news then- I can only conclude that there's either some issue with your card, or some previous driver is causing a conflict.

*scoff* um, well, I actually never had a gfx card in this box until I got the one I mentioned before. I was just running off of the motherboard, so I doubt that past drivers were an issue. are there any settings that mabe were never set in the first place?

I was just running off of the motherboard, so I doubt that past drivers were an issue.

It is a long shot, and unlikely, but I have had problems in the past with drivers from one manufacturer being installed over another. Your onboard vga will have had some kind of driver too.

Ardent wrote:

are there any settings that mabe were never set in the first place?

I think, sadly, we are at a loss with this one, it could be pretty much anything and that includes hardware faults. The number of reports of 5200s working, and our own tests with the card we just bought seem to indicate no problem that would occur with a normal install. That leaves either a hardware fault, or some rare conflict with hardware/software installed on your machine.